Blacklisters

Adults - Very Good, Based on 3 Critics

Drowned In Sound - 90Based on rating 9/10

90

It has probably happened to most of us. A video is posted on your Facebook feed by a friend, or more than likely a friend of a friend, so you click on it. It’s an anonymous foot kicking the shit out of a plucked and gutted chicken carcass. It’s kicked everywhere, across a tiled floor, into a washing machine, against skirting boards again and again, until it is a puddle of pink, fleshy, gloop.

Blacklisters’ new album is a potent burst of noise rock that pulls in sounds from hardcore, post-hardcore, and sludge metal. Vocalist Billy Mason-Wood is typically abrasive for this style of music, which doesn’t make the band an easy listen for the layperson. But the rest of the band is tight and interesting enough that Adult starts to work as an album after a few listens, even if Mason-Wood is an acquired taste.

It’s been a while coming, but Leeds’ Blacklisters have returned with Adult, a few years wiser and – on the evidence of the record – a little bit lost. What has inspired Adult is easy to recognise. Lead man Billy Mason Wood’s laconic drawl pays respect to the likes of Steve Albini and David Yow, while Dan Beesley (guitar) and Owen Griffiths (bass) work together to create an aural atmosphere somewhere between the gutter and the sewers.